UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Appellee, v. MATTHEW OLIVER, Defendant, Appellant.
No. 20-1654
United States Court of Appeals For the First Circuit
December 1, 2021
Howard, Chief Judge, Selya and Barron, Circuit Judges.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF NEW HAMPSHIRE [Hon. Joseph N. Laplante, U.S. District Judge]
Zainabu Rumala, Assistant Federal Public Defender, on brief for appellant.
John J. Farley, Acting United States Attorney, and Seth R. Aframe, Assistant United States Attorney, on brief for appellee.
I. BACKGROUND
We rehearse the relevant facts, recounting them in the light most hospitable to the jury‘s verdict. See United States v. Fuentes-Lopez, 994 F.3d 66, 71 (1st Cir. 2021). We then sketch the travel of the case.
In January of 2017, the defendant — while jailed in New York on a cluster of unrelated state charges — wrote a letter to his stepmother, Linda George, and mailed it to her at her address in New Hampshire. For ease in exposition, we refer to both Linda George and her adult daughter, Ryan George, by their first names.
The letter surprised Linda when it arrived: both she and Ryan had renounced their relationships with the defendant several years earlier (after they had developed concerns about his mental health). The contents of the letter reinforced these concerns. Although much of the letter rambled,
The letter upset Linda and left her concerned for both her safety and the safety of her daughter. Linda‘s fear — amplified by her prior experience with what she described as the defendant‘s “disturbing behavior” — impelled her to take the letter to her local police department in Seabrook, New Hampshire. She spoke with Officer Golden Tyre, who (after a preliminary inquiry) advised her that the defendant remained in custody in New York and did not appear to pose an immediate threat to her safety. Although this news partially allayed Linda‘s anxiety, she later secured a protective order against the defendant from a local court.
In April of 2017, another letter from the defendant arrived in Linda‘s mail. This letter was addressed to Ryan. Much like its predecessor, the second letter was rife with hostile language and weird satanic invocations. It also conveyed a sexually explicit threat that left Ryan worried about her physical safety. Finding the defendant‘s second letter “very disturbing,” Linda delivered a copy to Officer Tyre and told him about the restraining order she had obtained.
In due course, the Seabrook police department sent copies of both letters to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Following an investigation by the FBI, the grand jury indicted the defendant on the charges described above.
The travel of the case can be succinctly summarized. The defendant pleaded not guilty and did not seek to interpose any defenses based on either insanity or diminished mental capacity. A jury was empaneled and a one-day trial ensued. After the government presented its case in chief, the defendant moved for judgment of acquittal. See
The defendant then indicated that he intended to waive his right to testify. As part of its inquiry into whether the defendant‘s proffered waiver was knowing, voluntary, and
intelligent, see Lema v. United States, 987 F.2d 48, 52-53 (1st Cir. 1993), the district court sought clarification surrounding the defendant‘s mental health. The defendant informed the court that he took an antipsychotic medication to treat bipolar depression and that he had been committed to institutions three times, but that he presently had full control of his mental faculties. Along the same line, his attorney unequivocally assured the court that he harbored no doubts as to the defendant‘s competency either to stand trial or to waive his right to testify.1 Satisfied
In short order, the defendant rested without presenting any evidence. He proceeded to renew his motion for judgment of acquittal. See
The defendant again moved for judgment of acquittal, see
II. ANALYSIS
We review the district court‘s denial of the defendant‘s motion for judgment of acquittal de novo. See United States v. Kilmartin, 944 F.3d 315, 325 (1st Cir. 2019). The prism through which we review sufficiency-of-the-evidence challenges is familiar: we scrutinize the evidence in the light most hospitable to the jury‘s verdict, draw all reasonable inferences to the government‘s benefit, “and ask whether a rational jury could find that the government proved all the elements of the offense[s] beyond a reasonable doubt.” Fuentes-Lopez, 994 F.3d at 71. In making this determination, we place “no premium . . . upon direct as opposed to circumstantial evidence; both types of proof can
adequately ground a conviction.” United States v. Ortiz, 966 F.2d 707, 711 (1st Cir. 1992).
Under this standard of review, it is not our prerogative to make independent assessments of witness credibility. See United States v. Andújar, 49 F.3d 16, 20 (1st Cir. 1995). Rather, we must “resolve[] all credibility issues in favor of the verdict.” Id. To uphold a conviction, we need only ascertain that the verdict “finds support in ‘a plausible rendition of the record.‘” United States v. Echeverri, 982 F.2d 675, 677 (1st Cir. 1993) (quoting Ortiz, 966 F.2d at 711).
Here, both counts of conviction are premised on the same statute. See
The statute makes it a crime for a person “knowingly” to mail a communication by means of the United States Postal Service “addressed to any other person and containing . . . any threat to injure the person of the addressee or of another.”
communication would reasonably be
As to each count of conviction, the defendant challenges the sufficiency of the evidence only with respect to the third element of the offense. The defendant‘s chief contention is that the letters only “made clear his intent to wage psychological warfare,” not to inflict physical harm. Therefore, he contends, no rational jury could find that he knew (let alone intended) that either Linda or Ryan would understand his letters to contain true threats of bodily harm. The government demurs: it submits that the “evidence was ample to support the jury‘s conclusion that the
defendant knew that his letters would be perceived by a reasonable person as a true threat.” We examine each letter separately to determine whether a rational jury could have found that the defendant knew that his statements would be interpreted as true threats of physical harm.
A. Count One.
The first count of conviction (count one) derives from the defendant‘s letter to Linda. That letter included an ominous message: “If I were you I‘d tread carefully around town . . . and when I am done with you, you wont [sic] be able to walk let alone breathe until you die a moments [sic] notice from the day of my choice . . . .” In the same letter, the defendant wrote that Linda would “die a thousand deaths or more in a land far, far away + in a time you do not follow” (emphasis in original). Whether these statements comprised true threats was an issue of fact for the jury to determine. See Walker, 665 F.3d at 226; United States v. Fulmer, 108 F.3d 1486, 1492 (1st Cir. 1997).
Although much of the defendant‘s missive was rather cryptic, a jury reasonably could conclude — as this jury did — that the defendant‘s statements threatened Linda with physical harm. See Fulmer, 108 F.3d at 1492 (“The use of ambiguous language does not preclude a statement from being a threat.“). Indeed,
Linda testified that she regarded the letter as threatening bodily harm.
The harder question is whether the defendant knew that his letter would be so interpreted. He argues that the letter, read as a whole, shows that his threats could not be taken to portend physical violence. He points out that the threats were part of a rambling, sometimes unintelligible diatribe about “Satan,” “black magic[],” “Christian wicca,” and other metaphysical forces. Additionally, the defendant suggests that certain language in the letter limited his threats to the enigmatic
We do not agree. The evidence regarding the defendant‘s mental state consists of both the letter‘s text and his extrinsic commentary. Viewed in a vacuum, the letter‘s text is surely ambiguous: portions of its violent fantasies are explicitly denominated as psychic or metaphorical. And even though the letter does convey what clearly appears to be a death threat, it elsewhere predicts that Linda will “finally die of disease, possession of
the mind by spirits,” or will be burned alive by a nearby Jewish-operated power plant.
Here, however, the letter did not stand alone. The jury also heard from the deputy sheriff who interviewed the defendant during his detention in New York after the letters were received. The deputy sheriff testified that in response to a question concerning the contents of the letters, the defendant “adamantly” insisted “that Linda should be worried and concerned for her safety.” This admission supplies evidence from which the jury reasonably could infer the defendant‘s awareness that the letter would be interpreted by the recipient as a threat of bodily injury. See Kilmartin, 944 F.3d at 325 (explaining that reviewing court must consider both the evidence and “the plausible inferences therefrom“); Fulmer, 108 F.3d at 1493 (noting that jury is entitled to infer essential elements of the crime “from the circumstances surrounding the [threatening] statement[s]“).
The binary conclusion that the government presented sufficient evidence to show both that the letter contained a true threat of physical harm and that the defendant knew that his letter would be so interpreted is not undermined by the defendant‘s purportedly exculpatory statements to the deputy sheriff. Although the defendant said that he did not intend to threaten Linda with physical harm in the letter — he suggested that the threats were “all in his head and not illegal” — the jury was under
no compulsion to credit these self-serving statements. As a general matter, a criminal jury is entitled, within wide limits, to doubt a defendant‘s statements regarding his motives and to credit a plausible alternative motive suggested by the government. See United States v. Nivica, 887 F.2d 1110, 1115 (1st Cir. 1989); United States v. Cintolo, 818 F.2d 980, 989 (1st Cir. 1987). This is such a case.
At any rate, the defendant‘s statements to the deputy sheriff go only to his intent, not to his knowledge. Even if he intended to refer only to a psychic attack taking place “in his head,” he may nevertheless have known that Linda would not share this interpretation and would instead understand the letter to threaten her with bodily harm. On this record, the jury was free to reach such a conclusion and to find knowledge sufficient to establish the requisite mens rea under section 876(c).
To say more about count one would be to paint the lily. Taking the evidence in the light most hospitable to the jury‘s verdict — as the standard of review requires, see Ortiz, 966 F.2d at 711 — we conclude that the proof is sufficient to ground the defendant‘s conviction on count one. The district court, therefore, did not err in denying the defendant‘s Rule 29 motion as to that count.
We turn next to the second count of conviction (count two), which derives from the defendant‘s letter to Ryan. In that letter, which was written after Linda had secured her restraining order, the defendant explicitly threatened Ryan with sexual assault and other injury, although some of the violence is qualified. Pertinently, the defendant wrote: “Now go home and cry like the wind and if I ever see you outside my door . . . again, I will rape you like a baby and kill you IN MY HEAD for food — in my mind — much like the time your mother did inside my mind . . . .” In performing its factfinding function, the jury reasonably could have read past the letter‘s attempted qualifications and concluded that the letter contained a true threat to injure Ryan. See Fulmer, 108 F.3d at 1492.
Once again, the defendant argues that he lacked the requisite mental state (either intent or knowledge) to support a conviction. We agree that the letter‘s repeated characterization of certain of the defendant‘s threats as purely psychological, combined with its inherently delusional qualities, call into question the defendant‘s intent and/or his knowledge of how the letter would be interpreted. The jury, however, had more evidence than the letter alone. As we observed earlier, see supra Part II(A), the defendant‘s comment to the deputy sheriff that “Linda should be worried and concerned for her safety” lays the foundation
for an inference that he knew that his first letter would be received as a physical threat.
That same comment supports a parallel inference regarding his letter to Ryan. After all, the two letters were quite similar both in tone and in content. It was, therefore, fair for the jury to conclude that since the defendant knew that his first letter would be regarded as a physical threat, he must have known that his second letter would also be so regarded. See Ortiz, 966 F.2d at 711 (explaining that “juries are not required to examine . . . evidence in isolation, for ‘individual pieces of evidence, insufficient in themselves to prove a point, may in culmination prove it‘” (quoting Bourjaily v. United States, 483 U.S. 171, 179-80 (1987))). In the last analysis, “[c]hains of inference are a familiar, widely accepted ingredient of any process of ratiocination. This method of reasoning . . . should not be forbidden to a criminal jury.” United States v. Spinney, 65 F.3d 231, 238 (1st Cir. 1995).
Drawing all reasonable inferences from the evidence in favor of the verdict, see Fuentes-Lopez, 994 F.3d at 71, the proof at trial supplied a plausible basis for a rational jury to find that the defendant sent the second letter with the requisite knowledge of how it would be perceived. While much of the evidence relating to the defendant‘s knowledge is admittedly circumstantial, that is not a fatal flaw. There is simply no
requirement that the government must adduce direct evidence to prove a defendant‘s mens rea in a criminal case. See United States v. Floyd, 740 F.3d 22, 28 (1st Cir. 2014).
We need go no further. Because the evidence sufficiently shows that the defendant sent his second letter with the requisite knowledge of how it would be interpreted, the defendant was not entitled to a judgment of acquittal on count two. The district court, therefore, did not err in denying the defendant‘s Rule 29 motion as to that count.
III. CONCLUSION
We do not gainsay that reasonable minds could differ as to the persuasiveness and force of the evidence adduced at trial.
Affirmed.